But merry, mad and free
My love was. Look! yet come love hath.
Is this not great gentility?
I only remembered the ocean’s roll,
And islands that I passed,
And, in a vision of death and dread,
A city where my soul
Visited its vast
Passage of the dead.
My love’s eternity
I never entered, when, at last
“I blush with love for thee,”
My love, renewed in anger, said.
Is this not great gentility?
Over the road in an automobile
Rode I and my gentle love.
The traffic on our way was wild;
My love was at the wheel,
And in and out we drove.
My own eyes were mild.
How my love merrily
Dared the other cars to rove:
“But if they stop for me,
Why, then, I stop for them, my child.”
Is this not great gentility?
East Harlem, July 1948
The Voice of Rock
I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep
until a victim is resigned;
a shadow holds me in his keep
and seeks the bones that he must find;
and hoveled in a shroudy heap
dead eyes see, and dead eyes weep,
dead men from the coffin creep,
nightmare of murder in the mind.
Murder has the ghost of shame
that lies abed with me in dirt
and mouths the matter of my fame.
With voice of rock, and rock engirt,
a shadow cries out in my name;
he struggles for my writhing frame;
my death and his were not the same,
what wounds have I that he is hurt?
This is such murder that my own
incorporeal blood is shed,
but shadow changes into bone,
and thoughts are doubled in my head;
for what he knows and I have known
is, like a crystal lost in stone,
hidden in skin and buried down,
blind as the vision of the dead.
Paterson, August 1948
Refrain
The air is dark, the night is sad,
I lie sleepless and I groan.
Nobody cares when a man goes mad:
He is sorry, God is glad.
Shadow changes into bone.
Every shadow has a name;
When I think of mine I moan,
I hear rumors of such fame.
Not for pride, but only shame,
Shadow changes into bone.
When I blush I weep for joy,
And laughter drops from me like stone:
The aging laughter of the boy
To see the ageless dead so coy.
Shadow changes into bone.
Paterson, August 1948
A Western Ballad
Copyright © 1972 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg
A Western Ballad
When I died, love, when I died
my heart was broken in your care;
I never suffered love so fair
as now I suffer and abide
when I died, love, when I died.
When I died, love, when I died
I wearied in an endless maze
that men have walked for centuries,
as endless as the gate was wide
when I died, love, when I died.
When I died, love, when I died
there was a war in the upper air:
all that happens, happens there;
there was an angel at my side
when I died, love, when I died.
Paterson, August 1948
The Trembling of the Veil
Today out of the window
the trees seemed like live
organisms on the moon.
Each bough extended upward
covered at the north end
with leaves, like a green
hairy protuberance. I saw
the scarlet-and-pink shoot-tips
of budding leaves wave
delicately in the sunlight,
blown by the breeze,
all the arms of the trees
bending and straining downward
at once when the wind
pushed them.
Paterson, August 1948
A Meaningless Institution
I was given my bedding, and a bunk
in an enormous ward,
surrounded by hundreds of weeping,
decaying men and women.
I sat on my bunk, three tiers up
next to the ceiling,
looking down the gray aisles.
Old, crippled, dumb people were
bent over sewing. A heavy girl
in a dirty dress
stared at me. I waited
for an official guide to come
and give me instructions.
After awhile, I wandered
off down empty corridors
in search of a toilet.
Dream, Paterson, Fall 1948
A Mad Gleam
Go back to Egypt and the Greeks,
Where the Wizard understood
The spectre haunted where man seeks
And spoke to ghosts that stood in blood.
Go back, go back to the old legend;
The soul remembers, and is true:
What has been most and least imagined,
No other, there is nothing new.
The giant Phantom is ascending
Toward its coronation, gowned
With music unheard, but unending:
Follow the flower to the ground.
New York, January 1949
Complaint of the Skeleton to Time
Take my love, it is not true,
So let it tempt no body new;
Take my lady, she will sigh
For my bed where’er I lie;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Take my raiment, now grown cold,
To give to some poor poet old;
Take the skin that hoods this truth
If his age would wear my youth;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Take the thoughts that like the wind
Blow my body out of mind;
Take this heart to go with that
And pass it on from rat to rat;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Take the art which I bemoan
In a poem’s crazy tone;
Grind me down, though I may groan,
To the starkest stick and stone;
Take them, said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
Early 1949
Psalm I
These psalms are the workings of the vision haunted mind and not that reason which never changes.
I am flesh and blood, but my mind is the focus of much lightning.
I change with the weather, with the state of my finances, with the work I do, with my company.
But truly none of these is accountable for the majestic flaws of mind which have left my brain open to hallucination.
All work has been an imitation of the literary cackle in my head.
This gossip is an eccentric document to be lost in a library and rediscovered when the Dove descends.
New York, February 1949
An Eastern Ballad
I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.
I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.
1945–1949
Sweet Levinsky
Sweet Levinsky in the night
Sweet Levinsky in the light
do you giggle out of spite,
or are you laughing in delight
sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?
Sweet Levinsky, do you tremble
when the cock crows, and dissemble
as you amble to the gambol?
Why so humble when you stumble
sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?
Sweet Levinsky, why so tearful,
sweet Levinsky don’t be fearful,
sweet Levinsky here’s your earful
of the angels chirping cheerfully
Levinsky, sweet Levinsky,
sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky.
New York, Spring 1949
Psalm II
Ah, still Lord, ah, sweet Divinity
Incarnate in our grave and holy substance,
Circumscribed in this hexed endless world
Of Time, that turns a triple face, from Hell,
Imprisoned joy’s incognizable thought,
To mounted earth, that shudders to conceive,
Toward angels, borne unseen out of this world,
Translate the speechless stanzas of the rose
Into my poem, and I vow to copy
Every petal on a page; perfume
My mind, ungardened, and in weedy earth;
Let these dark leaves be lit with images
That strike like lightning from eternal mind,
Truths that are not visible in any light
That changes and is Time, like flesh or theory,
Corruptible like any clock of meat
That sickens and runs down to die
With all those structures and machinery
Whose bones and bridges break and wash to sea
And are dissolved into green salt and coral.
A Bird of Paradise, the Nightingale
I cried for not so long ago, the poet’s
Phoenix, and the erotic Swan
Which descended and transfigured Time,
And all but destroyed it, in the Dove
I speak of now are here, I saw it here,
The Miracle, which no man knows entire,
Nor I myself. But shadow is my prophet,
I cast a shadow that surpasses me,
And I write, shadow changes into bone,
To say that still Word, the prophetic image
Beyond our present strength of flesh to bear,
Incarnate in the rain as in the sea,
Watches after us out of our eyes.
What a sweet dream! to be some incorruptible
Divinity, corporeal without a name,
Suffering metamorphosis of flesh.
Holy are the Visions of the soul
The visible mind seeks out for marriage,
As if the sleeping heart, agaze, in darkness,
Would dream her passions out as in the Heavens.
In flesh and flesh, imperfect spirits join
Vision upon vision, image upon image,
All physical and perishing, till spirit
Driven mad by Time, a ghost still haunted
By his mortal house, goes from the tomb
And drops his body back into the dirt.
I fear it till my soul remembers Heaven.
My name is Angel and my eyes are Fire!
O wonder, and more than wonder, in the world!
Now I have built my Love a sepulchre
Of whitened thoughts, and sat a year in ash,
Grieving for the lost entempled dead,
And Him who appeared to these dead eyes,
And Him my wakened beating mind remembered,
And Love that moved in substance clear as bone,
With beautiful music, at the fatal moment,
And clock stopped by its own, or hidden, hand.
These are the hollow echoes of His word.
Ah, but to have seen the Dove of still
Divinity come down in silken light of summer sun
In ignorance of the body and bone’s madness.
Light falls and I fail! My youth is ending,
All my youth, and Death and Beauty cry
Like horns and motors from a ship afar,
Half heard, an echo in the sea beneath,
And Death and Beauty beckon in the dawn,
A presage of the world of whitening shadows
As another pale memorial.
Ah! but to have seen the Dove, and then go blind.
I will grow old a grey and groaning man,
Hour after hour, with each hour a thought,
And with each thought the same denial. Am I to spend
My life in praise of the idea of God?
Time leaves no hope, and leaves us none of love;
We creep and wait, we wait and go alone.
When will the heart be weary of its own
Indignity? Or Time endured destroy
The last such thoughts as these, the thoughts of Dove?
Must ravenous reason not be self-consumed?
Our souls are purified of Time by Time,
And ignorance consumes itself like flesh.
Bigger and bigger gates, Thou givest, Lord,
And vaster deaths, and deaths not by my hand,
Till, in each season, as the garden dies,
I die with each, until I die no more
Time’s many deaths, and pass toward the last gates,
Till come, pure light, at last to pass through pearl.
Take me to thy mansion, for I house
In clay, in a sad dolor out of joy.
Behold thy myth incarnate in my flesh
Now made incarnate in Thy Psalm, O Lord.
New York, March 1949
Fie My Fum
Pull my daisy,
Tip my cup,
Cut my thoughts
For coconuts,
Bone my shadow,
Dove my soul,
Set a halo
On my skull,
Ark my darkness,
Rack my lacks,
Bleak my lurking,
Lark my looks,
Start my Arden,
Gate my shades,
Silk my garden,
Rose my days,
Whore my door,
Stone my dream,
Milk my mind
And make me cream,
Say my oops,
Ope my shell,
Ring my bell,
Pope my parts,
Pop my pot,
Poke my pap,
Pit my plum.
New York, Spring 1949
Pull My Daisy
Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken
Bone my shadow
dove my dream
start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind &
make me cream
drink me when you’re ready
Hop my heart on
harp my height
seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
hype my light
lay it on the needy
Heal the raindrop
sow the eye
bust my dust again
Woe the worm
work the wise
dig my spade the same
Stop the hoax
what’s the hex
where’s the wake
how’s the hicks
take my golden beam
Rob my locker
lick my rocks
leap my cock in school
&
nbsp; Rack my lacks
lark my looks
jump right up my hole
Whore my door
beat my boor
eat my snake of fool
Craze my hair
bare my poor
asshole shorn of wool
Say my oops
ope my shell
bite my naked nut
Roll my bones
ring my bell
call my worm to sup
Pope my parts
pop my pot
raise my daisy up
Poke my pap
pit my plum
let my gap be shut
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Neal Cassady
New York, Spring-Fall 1949
The Shrouded Stranger
Bare skin is my wrinkled sack
When hot Apollo humps my back
When Jack Frost grabs me in these rags
I wrap my legs with burlap bags
My flesh is cinder my face is snow
I walk the railroad to and fro
When city streets are black and dead
The railroad embankment is my bed
I sup my soup from old tin cans
And take my sweets from little hands
In Tiger Alley near the jail
I steal away from the garbage pail
In darkest night where none can see
Down in the bowels of the factory
I sneak barefoot upon stone
Come and hear the old man groan
I hide and wait like a naked child
Under the bridge my heart goes wild
I scream at a fire on the river bank
I give my body to an old gas tank
I dream that I have burning hair
Boiled arms that claw the air
The torso of an iron king
And on my back a broken wing
Who’ll go out whoring into the night
On the eyeless road in the skinny moonlight
Maid or dowd or athlete proud
May wanton with me in the shroud
Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me
Belly to belly and knee to knee
Who’ll look into my hooded eye
Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?
New York, 1949–1951
Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City